I am hangry. That is a real word now and it describes a real condition and I have it.

My wife Linda will tell you. My friends will confirm it. There is a version of EJ that exists before food arrives and a version that exists after, and they are not the same person. The pre-food version has a shorter fuse, a lower tolerance for inconvenience, and a very specific relationship with waiting for a table that I am not proud of but have made my peace with.

Five minutes. Maybe ten. That is my limit. After that, something shifts.

How we became reservation people

Before COVID, we would just show up. Walk in, put our name in, wait. I hated waiting. I would pace. I would check my watch. I would suggest to Linda — more than once, more than twice — that we leave and go somewhere else. She would talk me down. Usually.

Then the pandemic changed everything about how restaurants operate and somewhere in the middle of all of it, we discovered reservations. Book ahead. Walk in. Sit down. No pacing. No watching the hostess stand. No suggesting we leave.

It changed my life. I am not exaggerating.

Now we make reservations everywhere. Every time. It is non-negotiable. The idea of walking into a restaurant on a Friday night without one feels like driving the wrong way on a one-way street — technically possible, almost certainly going to end badly.

The one thing that makes me even more hangry than waiting

Here is the problem with reservations. Sometimes you have one and you still have to wait.

You walk in at your exact time. You show the hostess your confirmation. And then — “it’ll just be a few minutes” — you are standing in a cramped little waiting area near the door with eight other people who also had reservations, everybody pressed together, nobody making eye contact, the smell of food coming from a room you are not yet in.

I generally just go wait outside. The cramped waiting space takes me to a level that even Linda cannot fully manage. Outside there is air. Outside there is room. Outside I can walk in small circles without bothering anyone.

If you made a reservation, seat me at my reservation time. That is the whole deal.

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Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

And now they’re rushing you out

This past Easter we had a 4pm reservation for eight. We sat down, we ordered, the food was excellent, the conversation was flowing the way it only does when everyone you love is around the same table. And then — while we were still clearly in the middle of things — out came the takeout boxes.

Nobody asked if we were finished. Nobody said “whenever you’re ready.” The boxes just appeared, which is the international restaurant signal for: time’s up, this table has somewhere to be.

What I learned later is that we had a two-hour window. Which is fine — I understand the economics — but nobody told us that when we booked. It was not in the confirmation. It was not mentioned when we sat down. It just materialized in the form of cardboard boxes while we were still working on dessert.

I think if a restaurant is going to put a time limit on a table — especially a large table on a holiday — that information belongs in the reservation confirmation. Not implied. Not signaled with to-go containers. Stated clearly, upfront, so you can plan your evening accordingly. That is a reasonable expectation and I do not think it is too much to ask.

New Jersey just moved to fix at least part of this

The New Jersey legislature unanimously passed a bill this week that addresses a different reservation problem — third-party websites that have been buying up restaurant reservations and reselling them to diners at inflated prices. The bill would ban reselling restaurant reservations without the restaurant’s permission, with fines of $500 per day per listing for violations, and it allows both restaurants and customers to sue.

Assemblywoman Carol Murphy said the goal is simple — making sure diners can get a reservation at a fair price without being scalped by a middleman. The New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association backed the bill, noting that when these third-party services scoop up reservations and fail to resell them, restaurants are left with empty tables on their busiest nights.

The bill now goes to Governor Sherrill’s desk.

It will not solve the cramped waiting area problem. It will not put the two-hour time limit in the confirmation email where it belongs. But it is a start.

And as someone who takes reservations very seriously — as a matter of both principle and blood sugar — I am paying attention.

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Gallery Credit: Jen Ursillo